The dangerous idea behind Trump's coup effort is still alive. Let's kill it.
As the Jan. 6 select committee kicks into high gear, one big thing it will examine is the role played by Mike Pence in the final days of Donald Trump’s effort to overturn his presidential reelection loss and remain in power illegitimately.
As vice president, Pence ultimately rebuffed Trump’s pressure on him to halt the congressional count of electors and declare Trump winner. Whether he did so after seriously entertaining this scheme, and what other bad actors pressured him to execute it, are things we need to learn about.
But we also need to do something else: We must kill off the dangerous legal theory that Trump and his co-conspirators hatched to justify that scheme, so it never rises again.
Some new reporting on Pence’s role, combined with a new analysis of that legal theory, should give us the hook for this. It’s important, because there are new signs this legal theory remains alive, though in staggering zombie form.
The theory is the one in the now-notorious Trump coup memo. Lawyer John Eastman outlined a scheme for Pence to ignore federal law and refuse to count President-elect Joe Biden’s electors, making Trump winner. Eastman discussed the theory with Trump and Pence a couple days before Jan. 6. Pence was unpersuaded.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/15/eastman-memo-jan-6-trump-pence/
